282 DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



globular but elliptical, and that its attraction is such 

 as requires us to admit the interior to be more dense 

 than the exterior, and the density to increase with 

 some degree of regularity from the surface towards 

 the centre, and that, in layers arranged elliptically 

 round the centre, circumstances which could scarcely 

 happen without some such successive deposition of 

 materials as would enable pressure to be propagated 

 with a certain degree of freedom from one part of 

 the mass to another, even if we should hesitate to 

 admit a state of primitive fluidity. 



(314.) But from such indications nothing distinct 

 can be concluded; and if we would speculate to any 

 purpose on a former state of our globe and on the suc- 

 cession of events which from time to time may have 

 changed the condition and form of its surface, we 

 must confine our views within limits far more 

 restricted, and to subjects much more within the 

 reach of our capacity, than either the creation of the 

 world or its assumption of its present figure. These, 

 indeed, were favourite speculations with a race of 

 geologists now extinct; but the science itself has 

 undergone a total change of character, even within 

 the last half century, -and is brought, at length, 

 effectually within the list of the inductive sciences. 

 Geologists now no longer bewilder their imaginations 

 with wild theories of the formation of the globe 

 from chaos, or its passage through a series of hypo- 

 thetical transformations, but rather aim at a careful 

 and accurate examination of the records of its former 

 state, which they find indelibly impressed on the 

 great features of its actual surface, and to the 





